TOUCH-ME-NOT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Touch-me-not

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/tətʃ-mi-nɑt/ Listen

Touch-me-not

noun

North American annual plant with usually yellow or orange flowers; grows chiefly on wet rather acid soil. Synonyms: celandine, Impatiens capensis, jewelweed, lady's earrings, orange balsam.

Mediterranean vine having oblong fruit that when ripe expels its seeds and juice violently when touched. Synonyms: Ecballium elaterium, exploding cucumber, squirting cucumber.

Prostrate or semi-erect subshrub of tropical America, and Australia; heavily armed with recurved thorns and having sensitive soft grey-green leaflets that fold and droop at night or when touched or cooled. Synonyms: action plant, humble plant, live-and-die, Mimosa pudica, sensitive plant, shame plant.

See images of 'Touch-me-not'

Etymology of 'Touch-me-not'

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Touch-me-not" Quotes from Famous Books

... be with the nervous little seed-pods of the touch-me-not, which children ever love to pop and see the seeds fly, as they do from balsam pods in grandmother's garden, they still startle with the suddenness of their volley. Touch the delicate hair-trigger at the end of a capsule, and the lightning response of the ...

— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... hear my lessons? Father? Well, I guess not! Besides, it wasn't my fault. I was there all ready. It wasn't my blame that he wasn't there to hear me. But he might remember and come back. Well, if he did, I'd be there. So I went to one of those bookcases and pulled out a touch-me-not book from behind the glass door. Then I sat down and read till the ...

— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter

Words linked to "Touch-me-not" : Ecballium, gourd, gourd vine, genus Mimosa, genus Ecballium, genus Impatiens, shame plant, herbaceous plant, herb, mimosa